The gate of the year

Limestone relief showing a ram, from the city of Mendes and dating to the Ptolemaic period (about 300 B.C.), now in the Museum of the Art Institute of Chicago, IL, USA. The city of Mendes, in Lower Egypt, was the center of the cult of the god Ba-Neb-Djed, a fertility god associated with a sacred ram. As a god of fertility, Ba-Neb-Djed was regarded as the symbolic father of the king: for example, Ramses III claimed, in an inscription on a funerary stele, his own descent from the god (Remler 2010).

[Image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/mharrsch/7263192520/in/set-72157620591054700]




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Limestone relief showing a ram, from the city of Mendes and dating to the Ptolemaic period (about 300 B.C.), now in the Museum of the Art Institute of Chicago, IL, USA. The city of Mendes, in Lower Egypt, was the center of the cult of the god Ba-Neb-Djed, a fertility god associated with a sacred ram. As a god of fertility, Ba-Neb-Djed was regarded as the symbolic father of the king: for example, Ramses III claimed, in an inscription on a funerary stele, his own descent from the god (Remler 2010). [Image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/mharrsch/7263192520/in/set-72157620591054700]